Identifying and characterising price leadership in British supermarkets

Jonathan S. Seaton and Michael Waterson

No 270652, Economic Research Papers from University of Warwick - Department of Economics

Abstract: Price leadership is a concept that lacks precision. We propose a deliberately narrow, falsifiable, definition and illustrate its feasibility using the two leading British supermarket chains. We find both firms engaging in leadership behaviour over a range of products, with the larger being somewhat more dominant but the smaller increasing leadership activity over time. Surprisingly, more price leadership events are price reductions than price increases, but the increases are of larger monetary amounts (so average price increases over time) and the events appear not necessarily related to cost changes. Price leadership appears to play some role in price increases.

Keywords: Financial; Economics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 18
Date: 2012-04
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Related works:
Journal Article: Identifying and characterising price leadership in British supermarkets (2013)
Working Paper: Identifying and characterising price leadership in British supermarkets (2012)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:uwarer:270652

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.270652

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